2.12.2007

You bought that new washable keyboard...right?

stolen from the hopefully not cold dead fingers of Kristy Kiernan,by way of the comments list, posted to DorothyLand probably a partridge in a pear tree involved as well.

* 1 to devise a breakdown of the steps necessary to change the bulb

* 1 to stare at the bulb hoping it will change itself

* 1 to explain why changing the bulb is futile, because the next one is just going to go bad too, and without co-op we‚re all doomed to darkness anyway

* 1 to call their agent and publicist to make sure changing the bulb won't harm their reputation

* 1 to hold out for a bigger, better replacement bulb

* 1 to post "What's the best way to change a bulb?" on Backspace and wait for 36 answers

* 1 to extol the virtues of the old bulb, the golden glow of the light it gave, its soft, barely perceptible buzz when viable, the startling ping when it expired, the breadth of our loss, the depth of our grief

* 1 to edit the previous writer's bit whilst quoting Elmore Leonard

* 1 to bring the tequila

* 1 to bring the beer

* 1 to bring the wine

* And 1 to look around, call it a conference, and make it a yearly event

1 to call her publicist. Why go to all the trouble if it's not going to generate buzz?

1 to later ask her husband and children if they really liked the way she did it. Sulk and cry if they didn't. Wail that no one believes in you. Then, in the middle of the night, realize they were right, get up and re-screw it.

What do you really get when you leave six monkeys alone with a computer for a month? A colossal mess! Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word. According to Brian Bernbaum, “a group of faculty and students in the university’s media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques. Then they waited” (2003). The results were far from what evolutionists had hoped to see. Researcher Mike Phillips noted the first thing to happen was that the “lead male got a stone and started bashing…it” (as quoted in Bernbaum, 2003). He went on to note “another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard.”

Eventually the six monkeys—named Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe, and Rowan—did produce five pages of “text.” However, that “text” was composed primarily of the letter S, with the letters A, J, L, and M added on rare occasions. Mike Phillips noted, “They pressed a lot of S’s.” He went on to state, “obviously, English isn’t their first language”